Sunday, December 7, 2014

Vet visit

We don't have a full-time large animal vet anywhere near us, which is why I always wind up driving the two hours to the University of Illinois vet clinic in emergencies. However, there is a traveling vet that comes through here, and although it would be $140 to have her drive here just for us, if I can coordinate her visit with another nearby farm (or two or three), we can reduce that cost considerably. And that's what happened a couple of weeks ago. A farmer friend of mine was having the vet come to her place to trim her boar's tusks, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to get an ultrasound on a goat that was being sold to Texas to make sure she was pregnant.

So, here's Marie on the milk stand, enjoying some grain, with no idea that the vet is about to put that cold ultrasound probe on her belly. It went totally fine though -- after Marie's initial shock -- and we learned that she was pregnant with at least two bouncy kids! So, Marie is now in her new home down in Texas.

Since the vet was going to be here, I also decided to get an ultrasound on Vera. She was two months pregnant and already huge. I have only ever had three goats look pregnant at two months -- Vera when she had quintuplets last year, and her mother Coco, the two times she had quints!

If memory serves, this is just a picture of amniotic fluid, but that means the goat is pregnant! Unfortunately, with Vera being two months into her pregnancy already, the vet couldn't get a good view of all the kids at once. She could see three at one time, but she was hesitant to say that there were more than that because it's tough to know when you're seeing the same kid or a different one each time you move the probe a little. So, I guess we'll just have to be surprised at the end of January when Vera kids. If she does have five in there again, I just hope that they come shooting out as easily as they did this last kidding season. Mike was home alone and said he could hardly get them dried off fast enough.

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Welcome!

In 2002, my professor-husband, three kids, and I left the Chicago suburbs to live the adventure that Thoreau never imagined on a 32-acre homestead on a creek in the middle of nowhere. As clueless city slickers, we made a lot of mistakes, learned a little, and had a lot of fun. Even though the children have grown up and left home, Mike and I are still here, making some mistakes, learning more, and having tons of fun. If it sounds like a frontier version of Gilligan's Island ... well, sit right back and you'll hear a tale of goat birthing, gardening woes, coyote problems, food from the farm, housebuilding progress, and whatever happens to be happening around here.

Deborah Niemann

and Mary Poppins the goat

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